Free Winterlude by Quentin Bates

to break Borgar’s nose, although I don’t believe any one of them would have gone so far as to kill him. These people aren’t crazies, and for most of them I reckon this was so long ago now that it’s in the past. Fishermen are used to setbacks. They move on.’
    ‘I guess you’re right.’
    Henning looked quickly behind him. ‘But have you found his secret cubbyhole?’ he asked, with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye.
    Gunna tracked Bjarni Björgvinsson down to the smart newish house his parents owned and she waited while the young man’s mother went to wake her youngest son several hours before the usual time he was on his feet. She came downstairs with suppressed frustration in her eyes.
    ‘He’s still in bed. I don’t know what the matter is with him these days. He’s surly, he’s rude and he has mood swings. It’s driving his father and me nuts,’ she admitted.
    Gunna smiled inwardly. ‘Tell me about it,’ she said, trying to look sympathetic.
    ‘You have the same problem, maybe?’ Bjarni’s mother asked, clearly anxious for Gunna to have exactly the same headaches to deal with.
    ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Gunna said guardedly, wondering whether or not to tell this worried woman that her son’s behaviour clearly spelled out either alcohol or dope, or both.
    ‘You have children as well?’ Bjarni’s mother asked.
    ‘A boy and a girl.’
    ‘They say girls are less bother. Is that true?’
    Gunna wanted to laugh. ‘I couldn’t say. But my mother certainly wouldn’t agree with that.’ She looked at her watch and listened for any movement. ‘Is he going to be long, do you think?’
    The woman shook her head and Gunna could see the grey in her fair hair. ‘I’ll go and call him again.’
    ‘How about I go and wake him up?’
    Her eyes bulged for a moment and she hesitated. ‘It’s a bit of a mess,’ she said defensively.
    ‘If a bit of a mess was the worst I had to be worried about in this job, believe me, it would all be so much easier. Where’s the boy’s room?’
    ‘At the top of the stairs, on the right,’ she said in a faint voice as Gunna took the stairs two at a time. At the top, the not unfamiliar smell of boy’s bedroom guided her and she rapped smartly on the door, didn’t bother waiting for a reply and clicked on the light as she stepped inside.
    ‘Go away, will you? I said I’m not well,’ a voice whined from beneath the duvet. ‘And turn the light off.’
    Gunna strode to the window, swept the curtains aside and aimed a kick at the end of the bed. ‘I don’t care if you’ve got the plague and you’re missing an arm and a leg, you can wake up,’ she snapped, leaning down and roughly hauling the duvet back a foot to expose Bjarni’s head sunk in a deep depression in the pillow. He stared back at her dumbfounded through eyes heavy-lidded with too much sleep. ‘My name’s Gunnhildur. I’m an investigating officer at the city police force’s serious crime unit and I have some questions for you to wake up and answer.’
    ‘What . . . ? Now?’
    ‘Now. Right now. Either you wake up and pay attention, or I’ll call up a squad car and you can sit in an interview room at Hverfisgata wrapped in your smelly duvet and answer questions there,’ Gunna said, lifting a mess of magazines and CD cases from the room’s only chair and dumping it all on the desk under the window so she could sit down. ‘Your call. Make your mind up.’
    ‘This is police brutality,’ Bjarni said in a tone that carried little conviction. ‘And you need a warrant.’
    ‘You’ve probably been watching too many American cop shows. Sorry to destroy your misconceptions, Bjarni, but I don’t need a warrant. And if you think this is brutality, I’ll call up a squad car right now to collect you,’ she said, looking meaningfully at the ashtray on the windowsill overflowing with roaches. ‘And we’ll have a good look through this room in the process. I don’t suppose you’ve bothered to